


of unanswered questions & unsaid words

by silverkatana



Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: M/M, Unresolved Feelings, Unsaid words
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-21
Updated: 2019-08-21
Packaged: 2020-09-23 08:40:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,777
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20337280
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/silverkatana/pseuds/silverkatana
Summary: because it's different when it's him.





	of unanswered questions & unsaid words

“Why do you always show the others affection but not me? It’s never me,” Seungcheol whines lightly, leaning forward to make eye contact with Jeonghan, his eyes alight with playful spirit. Jeonghan smiles in response. “I hear you saying ‘I love you’ to them all the time, but why not me? That’s unfair.”

Jeonghan laughs, keeping an eye on the camera in his peripheral vision, too aware of the way it’s zoomed in to his and Seungcheol’s faces. “Alright, alright,” he responds, keeping his tone even to match Seungcheol’s, and there’s a part of him that hopes his acting is good enough to hide the slight unease that permeates his words.

The rest break out into chuckles, too, and Jeonghan catches sight of Seungcheol’s wide grin planted across his face, gums peeking out behind his lips and all, before the camera pans away, and he’s allowed to breathe an inward sigh of relief. The topic changes swiftly, much to his gratitude, and the recording ends in a matter of minutes afterwards with their concluding greeting.

Jeonghan is more glad about the end of the recording than he should be, but he manages to slip on a calm smile as per usual as he trails behind the rest of the members to their respective vans, only allowing his facial features to morph into expressionlessness when his spine touches the familiar backrest of the carseat.

At this point, he’s not sure whether he’s genuinely become a better actor, or it’s just that he’s become so used to acting when it comes to this particular area that this particular set of expressions has become second nature to him. Perhaps he’s stared himself in the mirror for long enough after being a nervous wreck on the days that he thought too much about this to know how to morph his expressions into placid ones.

_ I hear you saying saying ‘I love you’ to them all the time, but why not me? _

He feels his lips twitch downwards into a slight scowl, and he has to turn his head to the side before the rest of the members in the vocal unit can catch sight of his less than pleasant expression. The city passes him by in orange-white blurs of street lights against grey roads as he stares blankly out the window, and the glow of the city in the gloom of the setting sun is usually something he enjoys watching, but it’s unable, still, to take his mind off Seungcheol’s words that infiltrate his mind again and again without rest.

“Jeonghan?”

It takes two, maybe three (maybe four) times before Jisoo is able to get his attention, peering over to glance at his face, eyebrows knitted in mild concern. “You’ve been very quiet,” he muses with a faint gesture to the rest of the members, who, in contrast, are screaming at the top of their lungs, courtesy of Seokmin’s new and improved rap verses that has everyone choking on their laughter. “You okay?”

“I’m tired,” he mutters in reply, offering a small smile as he pulls his hood over his head. “I’m going to sleep.”

Jisoo shoots him a look that reads along the lines of _ how could you sleep with this noise _, and Jeonghan realises belatedly that it was a terrible excuse to give, considering his intolerance for noise when sleeping that all the members are well aware of; but it’s too late to retract his words now - Jisoo wouldn’t stop harassing him about what’s troubling him if he did, and that’s the last thing he wanted - and in a feeble attempt to prove his point, he tugs the hood further over his head and promptly closes his eyes, refusing to budge after minutes despite his the restlessness that’s beginning to creep into his veins from sitting in the same position for so long in absolute silence. Jisoo gives up and leaves him be.

His fingers curl into fists, pressing into the folds of his clothes.

_ I’m scared that if I said it aloud, it would mean more to me than it should._

─────────── ☽ ───────────

“How did you find me?” Jeonghan asks. He doesn’t have to turn around or look over his shoulder to know who it is who takes a seat next to him on the park bench. His old black jacket, one that Jeonghan has admittedly stolen more than a couple of times, is familiar, just like the soft breath he lets out - barely loud enough for Jeonghan to catch it - when he sits down, just like the warmth that he brings in the cool of the evening air that makes Jeonghan automatically want to move closer to him. He holds his ground.

Seungcheol lets out a small noncommittal hum, resting his gaze upon the serene emptiness of the park for a moment, void of motion aside from the cast shadows of leaves recovering from winter’s frost, before he responds. “You disappeared after dinner. There’s usually only one place you would go, anyway. Everyone knows that.”

Jeonghan shrugs. “It didn’t have to be this park. It could’ve been others.”

A chuckle escapes Seungcheol’s lips as he tilts his head slightly to look at Jeonghan. Jeonghan refuses to make eye contact. (They’ve always been bad at that anyway.) “I guess I just know you well.”

Jeonghan doesn’t know how to respond to that, so he ends up making a soft noise of affirmation.

“By the way,” Seungcheol continues speaking, and Jeonghan stiffens against his will. “You seemed pretty tense today after I spoke.”

He forces a laugh. It doesn’t come out sounding quite right to him. He just hopes Seungcheol doesn’t know him well enough to detect the blatant lie falling past his lips. “Tired. It was a long day.”

“That’s not how you act when you’re tired.”

He fights the urge not to flinch. Seungcheol is sitting too close to him for him not to notice if he did.

Instead, a sigh flits forth from him, louder than intended, and he pulls a face when Seungcheol breaks out into laughter at his clear mortification. “You do know me too well,” he remarks in the end, a wry smile tugging on his lips as he leans back against the park bench. Seungcheol smiles at that.

There’s a long silence that stays between them as they stare out at the fading lights, watching as the lilac hues painted across the evening skies bleed into the darker violet-blue shades of night, watching as the clouds grow heavier with the promise of rain, watching as they each get lost in a kaleidoscope of their own thoughts.

Seungcheol is the first one to break the quiet.

“I was telling the truth, you know.” He shifts in his seat, and his leg brushes Jeonghan’s. He crosses them quickly. “I mean. During the recording. Whatever I said to you. Even though the cameras were rolling.”

For a moment, Jeonghan is floored, Seungcheol’s words still ringing in his mind with incredible clarity. He doesn’t know what to respond with, so he settles on, “I know.”

“Oh.”

It begins to drizzle, the raindrops falling in slow, steady drops and landing in fat splashes against their exposed skin. They begin to seep through Jeonghan’s clothes, little by little, and then faster and colder, and he shivers at the sensation, regretting his decision not to wear thicker layers. He hates feeling cold.

But Seungcheol doesn’t seem to be having any thoughts of leaving, his eyes still rooted vacantly on the darkening lilac skies and swaying leaves, so Jeonghan stays put, too. 

“It’s not that I hate it that much,” Seungcheol says at last, seemingly ignoring the rain altogether, the droplets landing in his hair and along the sides of his face, “I was just curious.”

“What?” Jeonghan asks half-heartedly, temporarily too distracted by the falling rain and the chill to pay attention to Seungcheol’s words. “Seungcheol, we’re going to fall sick if we stay out like this. The managers will kill us.”

Seungcheol pays no heeds to Jeonghan. A cold shoulder for a cold shoulder, Jeonghan supposes, although they’re not really ignoring each other. But cold shoulders or not, _ he’s _ cold - literally - and he’d much rather be getting back to the dorms than having this conversation with Seungcheol. “I mean, I just wanted to know why it’s so hard to say it to me. Is it that hard to love me?” 

He says it in a joking tone, but Jeonghan sucks in a sharp breath all the same. The air is frigid thanks to the increasingly heavy rain, and he flinches at the way it stings the back of his throat slightly. 

_ It’s not that. _

He doesn’t tell Seungcheol that.

“Seungcheol,” he says, quieter this time, and the faint smile is wiped off Seungcheol’s face at the underlying somberness in his voice. “The rain’s getting heavy.”

Seungcheol stops trying.

He stands, the park bench creaking - quiet, but too loud in the silence that lingers once more - and so does Jeonghan, and they begin to walk, their silhouettes fading into the disappearing evening light, jackets sodden with rain, one’s shoulders heavy with questions unanswered, the other’s laden with the weight of words unsaid.

_ It’s not that. _

_ I just thought that if I didn’t say it, maybe I would end up thinking I didn’t love you long enough for me to believe it was true. _

─────────── ☽ ───────────

Jeonghan is forced to come to terms with his feelings again in June, when the light chill of spring is beginning to melt into the heat of summer, and the temperatures are getting too high for him to hide his thoughts behind the folds of his hoodie.

It happens on an unexpected day; he takes his seat next to Jisoo, listens as the usual greetings are said, and plants a smile on his face as the fansign is set into motion. Halfway through the event, he can feel himself tiring, and he ends up complaining about his lack of energy as he leans his head against Jisoo’s shoulder. Jisoo only chuckles in response, gesturing for him to get up when a fan approaches the table.

He reaches out with a practised smile - it’s not that he’s not glad to be interacting with the fans, but he genuinely is tired - and takes the poster from her (he realises after a second that he’s staring down at a picture of his own face and ends up praising his looks, making her laugh and Jisoo hit his shoulder), peering down at the words written neatly in black ink on the corner of the poster.

_ What words do you want to say the most to Seungcheol that you haven’t been able to? _

So _ simple_.

But so _ difficult_.

And suddenly he’s wide awake, sitting up in his seat as if it were crackling with electricity with the power of a hundred lighting strikes. In that very moment, he feels vulnerable, too vulnerable, his marker pen frozen mid-air as he unconsciously clutches at the hem of his sweater with his other hand; it feels, for that very moment suspended in the cruel unticking of time, that the world can see right through him, peering straight into his heart and mind and unravelling all the complicated thoughts and feelings that he’s had - that he _ has _ \- about and for Seungcheol, all tangled in a twisted mess somewhere in the recesses of his soul.

And he’s gripped with a sudden fear, and his fingers curl around the marker so tight he might’ve broken either the pen or his fingers if he pressed a little harder; there’s an unexplainable sense of distress that begins to rise, asphyxiating, and the words that he’s been unable to say for too long rise to his chest, then to his head, drowning out all the other thoughts in his head.

Jisoo elbows him in the side, snapping him out of his panicked reverie, and he smiles apologetically at the fan as he forcibly relaxes his grip on the marker pen. “It’s a difficult question,” he says by way of explanation, the corners of his eyes crinkling as he tries his best to sound casual. He still sounds like he’s suffocating, and all he can hear still is the sound of his too fast heartbeat amalgamated with his roaring thoughts, but he hopes that no one else can hear the unsaid feelings thickening his tone and rendering him unable to formulate proper sentences.

He remembers the first time he realised it was a different kind of love, back when cold winter mornings had blended into colder nights and he had wrapped himself around Seungcheol under layers of blankets, burying himself in the warmth that the leader seemed to be able to provide, and back when he woke up to Seungcheol centimetres away from himself, eyes still fluttered half-open with sleep, and back when his heart beat so fast he forgot all about the cold.

He had been so afraid to say anything to Seungcheol, to give any hint of affection, because it felt _ different _ when it was him. Because the _ I love you _ that slipped off his tongue when he spoke with the other members sounded so _ different _ in his mind when it came to Seungcheol.

Because it was different, different in a way that shouldn’t have been, that shouldn’t be, and that can’t be.

And he had been afraid. Afraid of himself, of his own feelings, afraid of the day Seungcheol might find out, afraid of the day anyone might find out.

He ended up not saying a word, banishing all thoughts of it from his consciousness, burying it deep down amongst other thoughts and memories that he refused to allow to resurface. His fear drove him to foolishness, believing that maybe, just maybe, if he made himself think he didn’t love Seungcheol the way he did, he’d believe his own lies someday.

And then everything would be okay, and he’d be able to say _ I love you _ so _casually _ to Seungcheol, just like he did with everyone else, because it wouldn’t mean as much as it did anymore.

The tip of the marker pen touches the poster, leaving a small black mark. Jeonghan bites his lips as he stares at the question, so innocently phrased, yet bringing up too many emotions to be anywhere near innocuous. 

He had been stupid to think that he would forget.

(He won’t forget. He won’t forget anything about him, not if it’s _ him_.)

He remembers everything, from the day his heart first beat more than it should amidst the gazes lidded with sleep in the hazy breaks of dawn, to the day filled with the words that rose again and again from his heart to his tongue only to be expelled with every soft breath, to the day in the park with the lilac skies and rain falling like tears against their cheeks.

And the feelings still burn in his chest like autumn leaves catching fire in the centre of a forest, still exist in every shred of his being like the way purple streaked the darkening night with its colours, still flood through him from head to toe like the droplets of rain soaking past his clothes and into his skin. 

(But it’s a warm feeling. Warmer than the rain.)

He tightens his grip on the marker pen and begins to write.

_ Seungcheol-ah_.

He lets the words, black ink striking against the white of the shirt he wore in the poster, be burned into his mind’s memory; the same words that made it to the tip of his tongue a few too many times, the same words that were forced away by his too heavy rush of thoughts, the same words that died in his throat over and over and over again.

The same words he’s always wanted to say but could never.

Not to _ him_.

(He tries to brush away the little whisper at the front of his mind reminding him that he still can’t.)

The words are written a little messily, looking almost too casual for the amount of meaning that’s loaded behind them.

But he likes it like that - so carelessly written, like it was something he had thought of off the top of his head, like it wasn’t something that had been haunting him for days that transitioned into weeks and then months and then _too long_.

That way, no one would know a thing. Except him.

(Sometimes he wonders what would it be like if they did, but he brushes that thought away quickly.)

He hands the poster back with an affable smile, eyes tracing over the words he had scrawled out in black ink.

_ Seungcheol-ah, I love you_. 

**Author's Note:**

> so i wrote an entire fic based off jeonghan's response to a fan's question during a fansign in 2017... hope you enjoyed xD
> 
> [twitter](twitter.com/yoonjeongcheols)


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